At some point, everyone gets dark circles under their eyes. When you do, act quickly to identify the problem causing your circles, and solve it. Here are the usual suspects:

Fatigue

Fatigue is the exhaustion of various nervous and chemical systems in the body. It isn’t only caused by a lack of sleep, either; stress and anxiety can also wear out your adrenals and cause fatigue.

When your body is fatigued, it cannot heal properly. The usual process of replacing old cells with new ones slows down. This leads to a temporary aging of your skin, causing it all to sag. The skin under your eyes, being so thin, sags the most, exposing the dark veins below.

Fatigue is harder than you’d think to fix. You don’t just need more sleep. You need less stresses to the body, both when asleep and awake. Changes could include moderate exercise to induce a more relaxed nighttime state, a better mattress, an easier job, a less cluttered environment, or improved self-esteem.

Alcohol

Alcohol causes terrible under-eye circles, in two ways. First, it interferes with your sleep. Although alcohol depresses the nervous system, when it wears off, it causes a surge of brain activity that wakes you up in the middle of the night. Even if you don’t remember it, alcohol likely has caused sleep disturbances.

Second, alcohol dries out the body. This depletes the extracellular matrix, a layer of fluid that plumps up your skin.

There’s no way around it: if you want to manage dark circles, you need to reduce your alcohol consumption.

Anemia

Dark circles can be an early sign of anemia. Talk to your doctor about receiving a blood test.

Smoking

Smoking constricts the blood vessels. This can make skin look nice and taut, at first. As time goes on, the lack of nutrients damages the collagen in your skin and causes premature aging. Quit now before more damage is done.

Swelling

Swelling in the flesh under your eyes pushes veins closer to the surface, darkening them. There are a whole bunch of reasons that this could happen, including high salt intake, allergies, sinus congestion, hormones, stress, poor circulation, low dopamine levels, and even depression.

You can try to fix any or all of the above issues and see if they do any good. But for a quick fix, you can use a cold compress or refrigerated cucumber slices to bring the swelling under control.

Enhancements

Cosmetic enhancements are the most effective way to improve the skin under the eyes. Injectables can replace the collagen below, plumping the skin to an even and youthful appearance that hides veins. Laser treatments can also rebuild collagen chains, causing a long-term tightening of the skin.